aha – noted

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a lovely festive season with your nearest and (maybe, after a few days) not so dearest. I spent the holiday back with my parents in the sticks, and rather surprisingly, I didn’t revert to my sulking, bitch teenager self quite as much as I’d expected. Gosh – I must be growing up. But if my parents had been annoying me, then I would have most definitely got my own back on the day I took them for a walk in the woods and it ended up turning into ... umm... three miles. My parents are hardly decrepit, but I swear, I’ve never heard so much panting and complaining, and threatening to disinherit me. Whoops.

I spent New Year’s Eve with my best friend K, jumping around in his living room, drinking champagne, watching the fireworks on TV, and out of the window, and playing word games that increasingly involved gesticulating and screaming. We were also joined by his young male companion of the moment – 19 (yes, 19), a dancer, and cute as a button), and spent most of New Year’s Day in bed, watching films, eating bacon sandwiches and ice cream, and dozing off. All quite innocent, you understand, but it did make me feel ever so slightly like Eva Green in The Dreamers.

And speaking of two men in quick succession...

I went out with some friends on Christmas Eve, and with some workmates the night before that, and ended up going home with a different guy’s phone number each night. One called Simon and the other was Toby. Both quite nice lads, and on both occasions, they both hurriedly took my number as I was leaving the bar – having spent a good part of both evenings making a lot of smiley eye-contact. Clearly they’re not familiar with the ‘three-second rule ’ favoured by the likes of The Pick Up Artist – which is probably a good thing, since it means I must be attracting normal people for a change.

Now I’m not actually bothered about seeing either of them – just flexing my flirting muscles, so to speak. But it appears that the common thread between the two guys is that I texted first, and quite soon – quite vaguely, along the lines of ‘nice to meet you, hope you have a good Christmas’, etc. But they didn’t reply.

Aha. Now. Maybe there’s something in this. Maybe texting first isn’t the way to go. Of course, they could have just woken up the next day minus their beer goggles, but still, methinks not texting first could be a theory worth trying out. I’m out a couple of times this week, so if any more number swapping takes place, I’ll leave it there and see what happens. One of my problems in the past has been getting in touch a little too quickly – henceforth, this year, I do not chase. Let’s see how that goes...

I also had a one-sided date, I think, with an old friend from college, P. One-sided, because I’m pretty sure he’s reading a lot more into it than I am. We keep sporadically in touch by text, Facebook, etc, but I hadn’t seen him in years, and before I moved to London, I used to see him nearly every weekend. Nothing’s ever happened between us – in fact he used to spend most of college telling me to sod off, but I can’t help wondering now if that was the sixth form equivalent of pulling my pigtails in the playground rather than admit he liked a ‘smelly girl’. Anyway, we went for dinner and drinks on a weekday night, and while we had a great time and a fantastic laugh, a few things worried me slightly:

a) he turned up in a suit. I had on a jumper and jeans.
b) he insisted on paying.
c) he walked me to the tube, even though it was mere metres from the bar we were in.
d) he texted me straight away, saying he’d had a lovely time.
e) the next day, his Facebook status said he was in a 'really good mood'.

Yikes – right? Now that’s all very lovely, and he really is a great guy, and we have a great time together – and I know how ungrateful this all makes me sound – but honestly, I don’t fancy him.

Now normally, as a general policy this year, I’m going to be strict. If a guy is appearing too keen, and I’m not feeling it, then I’m going to have to be quick and final about letting him down. But I can’t do that with P – he’s a really good friend. I’m going to have to pull back here a bit, I think. It’s one thing to adopt a ‘love ‘em and leave em’ attitude, but it’s quite another to ruin a friendship.

So basically, what I learned over Christmas? Don’t call!

Oh, and that since there was a distinct lack of Mark Ronson under my Christmas tree, Santa is in fact, not real.